


Washing the Soul Clean

by inadistantworld



Series: Rare Pair Week [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Ah Shit I Dunno Vex Just Wants Keyleth to Be Careful And Keyleth Wants to Be a Bit Reckless, Declarations Of Love, F/F, Guilt, Post Goldfish Jump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-12-24 01:43:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12002301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inadistantworld/pseuds/inadistantworld
Summary: Keyleth may be alive now but Vex can't shake the feeling it's her fault that she died in the first place. Keyleth doesn't necessarily take away the guilt but she gives her something that makes it feel a little better in the end.





	Washing the Soul Clean

**Author's Note:**

> I don't write F/F stuff often, it sets me a bit on edge sometimes with the dysphoria but I've been doing really well on that front, mostly I just fear it never comes across right, but I figured the point of rare pair week is about posting new content for people who don't get much, so even my bad shit might make someone smile or something. Anyways, love the druid/ranger combo, hope you do too.

Sleep didn’t find Vex that night, not that she was looking for it. Instead she took first watch and sat very close to Keyleth and watched her closely.

A thousand foot cliff. And she turned into a goldfish of all things.

Vex looked back down at her hands, blood was still caked under her fingernails and in the grooves of her palms. No matter how hard she scrubbed there was always more. And Keyleth, gods they may have cleaned her up but there was only so much they could do.

Vex had barely breathed since she saw the small silhouette swan dive off the cliff and into the rocks.

“Vex,” Keyleth mumbled as her eyes cracked open. Sleeping in the open again brought back old habits of waking at the slightest sounds. “Vex go to sleep,” Keyleth reached out to her, fingers finding her hand and clasping it in her own.

“I’m keeping watch for a little longer,” Vex’s voice was soft and there was a small crack in it. A fracture in the stone.

Keyleth tugged, pulling her down and looped her arm around Vex’s waist, “Let Percy do it. Sleep with me.”

She forced a laugh through her whirlwind of emotions, expertly done of course, as it always was, “Darling I’m not sure you could handle that.”

“I can handle anything.” Keyleth mumbled and red hair drifted over her face. Her eyes finally closed again and her arm held Vex on the ground with her and Vex abandoned all hope of getting up again and just pulled Keyleth tight against her and kissed the top of her head. She didn’t sleep but she felt better feeling Keyleth’s heartbeat and her breath on the nape of her neck.

 

They arrived in Whitestone the next morning. Pike was quiet and walking close to JB who was also almost silent. Grog tried to cheer them up but wasn’t getting very far. Tary and Percy were walking in the back and Vex smiled when she saw them holding hands. It wasn’t a sight often seen from adventurers or boys as awkward as they were, but it was cute and she enjoyed seeing them happy together. Vax was keeping a close eye on Vex.

Vex refused to step away from Keyleth. Keyleth chattered away, talking about Zephra and how she missed adventuring and how she missed everyone and just about everything that came to her mind fell out her lips. And Vex nodded along but had a hard time focusing on anything but the fact that she had a voice, she was still speaking.

They had all died of course, Keyleth may have ‘popped her cherry’ yesterday but Vex was no stranger to friends falling in battle, or in Grog’s case once something worse than a fight. And it never got easier, there had never been an experience that didn’t leave Vex crying and blaming herself, but this was different.

The first thing Keyleth did when they got back was bathe, as everyone encouraged her to do so. And Vex made it 12 minutes and half way out of her armor before she got too antsy and left her room. She made her own way to the bath, which was more like a small pool in all honesty. It was inset in the floor and held at least five people, Keyleth, Vex, and Pike had bathed together on many occasions, though in much different circumstances. And when Vex entered she found Keyleth sitting with her back to her, humming and running a washcloth over her arms.

Vex crossed the room silently, still clothed, and sat behind her on the floor and put her hands on Keyleth’s shoulders. “Here, let me,” she whispered.

Keyleth looked up and Vex forced another smile, this time less perfect, and she hoped the tears were far enough back that Keyleth couldn’t tell. She took a small bowl from the side, there were always a few around after Pike requested some so she could wash Vex’s hair. Vex filled it with warm water and put the edge of her hand on Keyleth’s hairline to block the water from running into Keyleth’s eyes as she poured it.

For once Keyleth was silent and the only sound in the room was the trickle of water running back into the bath as it ran through her hair. Vex ran her fingers through it, cleaned it thoroughly with soap, massaged her scalp with the tips of her fingers, the whole shebang. And soon Keyleth’s hair, once matted with blood, more of a crimson than the firey orange Vex was used to, was now back to the way she remembered it.

The bath had smoke like wisps of red running through it, blood that seemed to stay separate from the water.

Vex took the washcloth and washed her shoulders and the top of her back, as much as she could get from sitting above Keyleth like this. “You have to be more careful,” she finally whispered.

“I just…I just wanted to help you.” Keyleth didn’t try and shake it off this time.

“I could have flown up, you could have turned into a bird, you could have just climbed down or something. What you did…it was reckless and it was dangerous and there is no amount of money in the world that is worth losing you.”

Keyleth turned around to face her, “But it wasn’t the money. Vex you’ve always been the bravest person I’ve ever known and I just wanted to show you I can be like that. I can be like you. And I thought maybe if you saw how much I’d grown…well maybe we would see each other more often. And as much as I loved the vacation stuff, I really liked going out to beat up demons. Even if it wasn’t real.”

It wasn’t the right thing to say. “You did it to try and prove something to me?” Vex shook her head. She had blamed herself for asking Keyleth to help her but it was worse than that. She made Keyleth believe she had to do something like that. Keyleth was trying to be like her and it got the druid killed.

“I just wanted you to think I was cool—”

“I’ve always thought you were cool! Well, maybe not cool like that but you know, I’ve always thought you were cool for us. You are like, the most powerful one here and you fucking turn into crazy shit like elementals and you are like the queen of your people or something, why would I ever think you weren’t cool? And why would you try and be like me? I’m just—”

“You’re everything.” The silence that followed was heavy and Keyleth’s cheeks turned about as red as her hair. “I mean, not everything of course. But you know. You talk to people and you wink and you shoot arrows and you fly and I just, well you know I always really admired you. And after the battle and the whole Trickfoot thing and you asked me to help, well I just wanted to show you how much fun it would be to be back together.”

“You don’t need to show off to me. All you had to do was ask to do something. Pike and Grog went and crushed the Crucible together, we could always do some adventure ourselves. You wouldn’t have to convince me. I would have just said yes. But Keyleth, you were just. You were almost nothing. You were just washing away and there wasn’t anything that wasn’t red. And it was just me trying to hold on to you.”

“You brought me back.” Keyleth was trying to shrug it off, like it wasn’t the big deal that it was.

“Of course I did! But that’s not the point. We could have lost you. I could have lost you.” Vex looked away and took a shaky breath to calm herself, another crack in the calm cool and collected façade.

“I’ve almost lost you too. I’ve stood over your body too.” When Vex looked back at Keyleth she was more serious than she had been in a long time. “And I will again. That’s my destiny. To just stand over all of you. And I got reckless because I wanted to be reckless. Because I see you just do things based on instinct and you look so cool when you do it and because I just wanted you to look at me the way I look at you. Every day I get reminded that compared to me you don’t have much time left and I don’t want to spend the rest of our time together visiting every couple months and sipping mojitos. As much as I love those times I want to spend every moment I have with you with more than just vacation mind.”

“Then what is it you want Keyleth? All you have to do is ask and we can do it, you don’t have to do crazy stunts like that to get my attention. What is it you want?”

“I want you.” There are some thing reserved solely for the eyes, one of those things is expressing the intense love you have for someone while being terrified of what they’re going to do. It is the look everyone has when they throw themselves off a thousand foot cliff for another person without having a backup plan.

Vex was suddenly very aware of everything. Of Keyleth’s bright eyes hyper-focused on her, the uncomfortable way her clothes stuck to her in the steamy room, the fact that Keyleth was very very naked, and all the emotional buildup that had happened and how it itched inside her, begging for some kind of relief. And now, after all these years, she had permission to do what she’d been terrified to even think of.

She cupped Keyleth’s cheeks in her hands and kissed her.

Vex still expected Keyleth to pull away but she threw her arms around Vex’s neck and pulled her in closer, deeper into the kiss. And also, in her distracted state, pulled her off balance and toppling with her into the water with half of her armor still on.

When she came out of the water the first thing she heard was Keyleth’s laughter bouncing off the walls, filling every crevice in the room, including all the ones Vex’s heart had sustained in all her very long years of pining after the druid. And Vex wasted no time in capturing Keyleth’s lips again, grabbing her by the waste, lifting her from the floor of the bath, and spinning her around.

And for the first time in a long time Vex was sure nothing could take this away from her, there was no power strong enough to take Keyleth from her, not if she had any say in it. Spinning ball of doom beneath the castle be damned, this was all that mattered.


End file.
